Alecyn shivered in the biting wind. Rain drizzled through the interlaced branches of the trees, adding to her discomfort. They had been walking through the forested hills for two days, starting at dawn and stopping at dusk. Her feet ached, and she knew she risked getting sick if she kept exposing herself to this country’s cold and damp climate. In this world, without the medicines she was used to, a cold could be debilitating. But there was no solution for it. Every time they stopped, Madeleine used magic to produce for them a fire, and she appeared adept at bringing down small animals to roast over the fire for Alecyn to eat. She herself did not eat or drink but seemed no worse for it. With the gross alteration inflicted on her, she clearly found her sustenance in other ways. Alecyn suspected she was feeding on the sound. At times, Madeleine’s posture reminded her of the Mutes when they had been breathing in the surrounding sound. But neither she nor Madeleine could kill and skin an animal for its hide.
“Madeleine, we need to find a village, a settlement of some kind. I cannot go on like this. I am not dressed for the open country.”
They were taking shelter from the rain, at Alecyn’s insistence. Huddled together, Madeleine’s cloak draped over them, they waited out the rain. Sitting as close as they could to a fire that crackled and spat with each drop of water that seeped through the canopy overhead. Madeleine shook her head.
“It is too dangerous. The Shriekers will look in the villages for us or for a word of our passage.”
“But I cannot go on like this,” Alecyn insisted. “I will get sick. Do you have any medical knowledge?”
Madeleine looked at her blankly.
“Do you know medicine?” Alecyn explained. Madeleine shook her head.
“My talents, such as they are, lie in different directions.”
“Then we need to find somewhere we can find warm clothes. If I get sick, I cannot go anywhere. In fact, in this world, a fever could kill me.”
Madeleine brooded on this. “We will find a village in the valleys lower down,” she finally conceded. “We risk being caught if we leave the hills, but if you wish it…”
Alecyn nodded fervently. “What people live in this wilderness?”
“Humans live everywhere,” Madeleine muttered morosely.
“You make it sound like a bad thing.”
“I have had no good experiences with humans.”
“Why? You do not tell me much about yourself, Madeleine. It is hard to trust someone who will not talk.”
“A human bought me from a Kajani slavery and taught me to sing. And other humans hated me for being different, for being Nelim. Humans betrayed me and sentenced me to death. A human did this to me.” The bitterness in her voice was ripe.
Alecyn put a hand on Madeleine’s arm.
“I am sorry, Madeleine. You have seen the worst of people. I am sorry for what happened to you.”
Alecyn remembered the Cubans she had met while volunteering in a refugee camp. She felt the same compassion for the suffering Madeleine had been through and wanted, instinctively, to help.
“Humans are not all bad, Madeleine.” She whispered. “There was the one who freed you from slavery, and there is me. I promise I will help you.” She did not know how, but that did not make the promise any less heartfelt. She would find a way.
*******************
The stream cackled and babbled down a steep slope, frothing over the rocks in its path. They had come across the spring and could see through a cut in the trees a wider river below, carving a path through the hills. Alecyn had decided their best chance of finding a settlement was to follow the water, the stream, to the river, and then the river until they found a village or a hamlet. It made sense to her that if there were people living in these hills, they would live near water. Madeleine had seemed surprised at her knowledge.
“I did not know humans knew woodcraft so well,” said Madeleine.
“My dad taught me.”
“He had no sons to teach?”
“I was an only child. He taught me what he would have taught to a son. I learned to hunt, fish, and how to survive outdoors. And I taught him to hunt deer with a camera instead of a rifle.” She chuckled as she stumbled over a mossy stone, sliding on the steep, muddy path.
“A camera?” Madeleine descended the path ahead of her, picking her way deftly, even with one hand only to balance. The other held open the lid of the box.
“Never mind,” Alecyn replied breathlessly. “I know the woods and keep it at that. Is that unusual for a human in this world?”
“Humans are of the sea. Nelim are of the forest.”
“And what about, what did you call them...Kajani?”
“They came from Men.”
“Humans...made them. By magic?” She was finding it easier to speak that word, to talk of it and mean what she said. When everything around her seemed impossible, it was time to rethink her basic premises.
“Of course, but that was long ago. They were soldiers in the Great War. Now, they are loose.”
Madeleine stopped suddenly, lifting her head, and sniffing the air.
“What is it, Madeleine?”
“Smoke.”
Alecyn caught it, then. It was a thick, earthy smell. Through the trees below, wisps of smoke appeared, curling around the branches in thickening grey spirals. It smelled familiar, and it took Alecyn a moment to place it. It was peat. Of course, there were trees in this world, and where there were trees, there was peat.
“It must be a house, a farmhouse in the valley, or a supply cabin for a trapper, maybe.”
Madeleine looked at her silently.
“It is not a campfire. You do not carry great blocks of peat around the woods to burn for a fire.” Alecyn felt confident in her logic. “So, it could be people.”
“Humans.” Madeleine practically spat.
“Anyone!” Alecyn responded firmly. “I do not care who.” She frowned at her companion. She would not have described her as a friend, but Madeleine had risked her life for Alecyn. But as they traveled west, a darkness fell over her, a bitterness.
“We should check it out, anyway.”
“I will go.” Madeleine decided. “I am Nelim. If they are human, they will neither see nor hear me.”
Alecyn nodded. Without another word, Madeleine slipped away down the path. Alecyn crouched beneath the exposed roots of a tree that a landslip had undermined. The earth was dry and smelled of wood. It was comforting. She hummed quietly to herself. As they journeyed, she experimented with singing, whistling, and humming. Madeleine was curiously reticent to teach her about the power she possessed.
She was dozing when a scream rose from the valley. She listened intently, leaning forward but remaining undercover. There was nothing to see. Then, more sounds, screams, shouts, and a terrible, inhuman wailing. She recognized it as the music from Madeleine’s box when she turned the handle—that sound that had driven off the Mutes and the giant eagle. The sound rose again, and another scream, a very human sound in contrast, carrying with it the desperation of someone cornered by something terrible. She dove from her resting place and hit the path at full sprint. She had never been a seeker of adventure, and the impulse to go to the source of those sounds had nothing to do with bravery. It was an impulse she could not resist, had never been able to resist. Someone was suffering, and she had to help.
The forest ground flew beneath her feet, constantly threatening to trip her headlong into water or trees. She ran and then fell and then stumbled and ran some more. The slope evened out, and she followed the calming stream, which widened as it flowed. Ahead, she could make out a clearing through the trees and a log cabin. She dropped beneath the cover of the ferns, praying that whatever was in that house had not spotted her adrenaline-fueled dash. She prayed it had not been Madeleine’s scream. Had she not said that Shriekers would track them?
She crept forward on hands and knees, carefully moving the surrounding ferns as little as possible. Stopping frequently to listen. There were no further sounds. Then, a door crashed open, and heavy footsteps thudded into the soft earth. There was a groan that Alecyn recognized. Pain. She risked a look above the undergrowth. A large, bearded man in leather and skins crawled across the clearing towards the side of the house. Alecyn could see a small, barefoot protruding from the corner of the house. A child’s body. And the man was desperately fighting to reach her. She got to her feet, unable to stand by. The man looked up as she approached, stark terror painting his face.
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“It is okay. I am a nurse… I mean a… a... healer.” She realized mid-sentence that she did not know what her profession would be called in this world. “You will be alright.” She ran practiced hands over his body, looking for wounds or injuries, putting to the back of her mind that whoever or whatever had attacked him might still be in the house.
“It was the...the...from the...forest...please.” He reached desperately for the child, who was forever out of his reach, his body contorting to reach her. Then falling limp.
Alecyn felt for a pulse. Then followed the man’s questing hand. She walked over with a feeling of dread. Behind the house, felled as though in fleeing mid-stride, were the bodies of a woman and a young girl. She slumped against the rough log walls, horror driving away reason. Madeleine appeared from the trees. Their eyes met.
“What did this?” Alecyn asked, horror giving way to ferocity at the casual taking of life. “What was it?”
“I do not know. I did not get a good look at it. I used blood music to attack it. It fled into the trees.”
“A Mute?”
“No, something else. Atramen has many creatures, and I do not know all of them on sight.”
Alecyn strode over to the Nelim, stepping close, eyes blazing. “Enough evasions. You will teach me, and you will begin now. I will have no one else dying because of me. Understand?” She was back in the emergency room, staring at the body of a teenager who had died on a trolley from gunshot wounds. The casual snuffing out of a human life sent a river of anger flooding through her. Anger and determination.
“If I have as much power as you claim I do, then I will make a difference. I will not have any more innocent people dying!”
Madeleine flinched from her tone, unable to meet her eye.
Alecyn stalked away. “Help me with them. We cannot just leave them like this.”
They pulled the body of the man and his family back into the house, laying them together and draping a sheet over them. Alecyn bowed her head, whispering a soft prayer and asking their forgiveness for bringing this down on them. Tears trickled down her cheeks to spot the scrubbed floorboards. A song rose in her memory from her mother’s funeral. She had made her aunt tell her what it was and where it came from and then spent long weeks searching for it in record stores up and down the county. It glorified the human spirit in defiance of evil and violence. It comforted in the afterlife's peace. Her voice, raised from a grief-choked mumble, rose again to ride the air, and flames suddenly licked upwards from the shrouded bodies. Madeleine leaped back, but the flames gave no heat. They did not touch the wood of the family’s home, though they roared with ferocity. Shapes formed within the churning fire, three distinct forms. Alecyn reached out a hand to them, but they fled, disappearing like dust in the wind. The flames died, the bodies consumed, and the shroud fell empty to the floor.
“You...are...great.” Madeleine stammered in shocked, hushed tones.
“I have never…”
Alecyn shook her head. “If I were great, these people would not be dead. Would they!” She did not know why she was angry at Madeleine. She bit it back, bringing it under control.
“I have been wearing the same clothes for days. I need to find something clean. And I need to wash. We will take what we can find from here and then follow the river. When we make camp tonight, you will start to teach me how to control this power, yes?”
Madeleine nodded.
*******************
Alecyn found clothes that almost fit her. She changed and put her own clothes in a small burlap sack she had found and tied it to her waist. She had washed in icy water drawn from a barrel behind the house. The sun was almost setting, but she had no desire to spend the night in the family’s home. She could not stop thinking about who they were and how they had spent their last night together, not knowing what horrors tomorrow would bring. They left, and Alecyn forced herself not to look back. They stepped into the shadows of the trees, following the sound of the water until they met the river. Alecyn took the lead now.
As they walked, Madeleine began instructing Alecyn on how to harness her power. But it came reluctantly, with every lesson dragged from the other woman.
“Why are you so against teaching me, Madeleine?” Alecyn demanded. “You know what is chasing us? I cannot do any good for us unless I know what I am doing.”
“I am not a teacher,” Madeleine said stubbornly. “Magic is dangerous in the hands of a novice and taught by a novice.”
“You may be a novice, but you seem competent enough to do what needs to be done.”
“I have been lucky.”
“Well, let us just hope you continue to be lucky because I will not continue blindly with one hand tied behind my back. I want to get where we are going, and if having control helps, then I need to know.”
After walking well into the night, Alecyn found them a small, sheltered hollow to make camp in. The stream flowed over the edge and formed a pool before winding away into the night. Fallen trees on one side provided a dry, sandy alcove beside the stream, where Madeleine sparked their fire with a short, trilling whistle.
As Madeleine left the firelight to hunt for food, Alecyn settled in front of the fire. She tried one exercise Madeleine had taught her. She focused on the heart of the flickering flames, staring into the middle of the fire and trying to clear her mind of every thought except her awareness of the hungry, licking tongues of fire. It was an exercise in concentration to enable her to focus on her goal to the exclusion of all else. She hummed a tune she knew intimately and had since childhood. Hearing her mother singing was one of her earliest memories. And Alecyn had hummed it to herself whenever she felt lonely at night, alone but with Eevee curled beside her. The music swelled and swept around her, enfolding her. She could feel wispy tendrils reaching out from her body into the air and found that she could direct them.
Her awareness expanded. Suddenly, she was no longer sitting next to the fire. She was racing through the trees, over stony hills and deep mountain ravines. The sky whirled overhead, stars and moon dancing through the sky. She fought to keep the excitement down, to keep her concentration focused on the image of Eevee beside her, the feel of her silky fur, the sound of her content purring. Then she halted so fast it jarred a gasp from her. And she was being pulled somewhere. There was a distinct sensation of being restrained, of no longer being in control of her direction. Before she could fathom how to take back control, she halted again.
She was high in the treetops, atop a platform of wood which seemed to grow from the tree's body. Light glowed in the center of the platform, a pale blue sheen that cast light all about it. A figure sat before her, cross-legged. It is back to the light. The skin had a bluish hue tinge, and bright purple eyes.
Its rigid crest of hair ran down the center of its head to the nape of its neck.
“A human, traveling on the Spirit Road... How unexpected,” it said.
“Where am I?” Alecyn asked, speaking aloud where she sat. She could still feel the heat of the flames and the ground underneath her, but her vision was elsewhere.
“In great danger.” It replied. “You walk the night as innocent as a child and do not know what you might stumble upon. I could shred your mind and leave you a gibbering idiot if I so chose.”
Questions flooded Alecyn’s mind, and the figure, surely a Nelim, raised its long-fingered hand as though to silence a shouting crowd.
“Slower, slower. Or I will have to send you back to where you came from. Such a sharp return to your body would not be pleasant. You clearly have strength but no skill. This place is deep within the forest east of the Towers and north of the Wall.”
Suddenly, knowledge blossomed in Alecyn’s mind. An awareness of where she was, or rather, where her body was. They were in the foothills of a large mountain range, winding their way through valleys westwards. She thought they were in the southwestern regions of Argent, not distant enough to be safe. The mountains swept to the east, dividing the land between north and south. She was on the northern flanks of it. There was a larger settlement to the west, much closer than Argent and high in the mountains. Is that where Madeleine is taking me?
“You should hope not, human. That is the Tall Towers, and it is a place of evil. It has long stood empty but for brigands. But of late, something worse has taken residence there. The Towers watch to east and west as they did long ago. I think you should remain beyond their sight, human.”
“Where are you?”
“I will not share that with you to protect my people. I would suggest you be more cautious yourself. Your soul is like an open book, though what it says is a foreign language to me. But I can see the goodness in you. A rare thing in a human.” He said the word with disgust and scorn.
“Who are you?” Alecyn asked.
“I am Erevar of the Hathain clan. I am a Walker.”
“A Walker?”
“I walk the paths of future events for the benefit of my clan. I seek a crisis and dangers to be avoided.”
“How am I talking to you?”
“Because your soul has left your body in search of…” Erevar frowned in concentration. “An animal...yet not...yet more...I can feel her searching for you, too. I have occasionally glimpsed something on the Road, but it has always eluded me. You are uneducated and reach a dark place, not knowing what lies within you.”
“We are both strangers to this world. That is why we are uneducated.”
“You are a stranger. She is home.”
“You are mistaken. She came with me. This is not her home.”
“She is home, human, and walks the Road skillfully and cunning. She is no stranger.”
Alecyn suddenly noticed another figure walking out of the light to stand beside Erevar. The figure was dark; its features shadowed, but she felt it was looking at her. It looked female, but Alecyn could say no more. Erevar looked up, surprise painting his features, then turned to look back at Alecyn. Without warning, physical sensation intruded on Alecyn’s concentration. She heard Madeleine’s voice and felt a hand on her shoulder. The vision dissolved, fading into the distance as it did. Erevar reached towards her, calling to her.
“Trust the Wardens, human. Tell them my name. And beware the Tall Towers!”
Alecyn felt as though she had awakened from a dream. She swayed back, slumping against a tree trunk. Her eyes blurred. Madeleine crouched beside her, concern on her face.
“I am okay, Madeleine. I contacted somebody. One of your people.”
Madeleine pulled away, sitting back with arms folded. “The Nelim dislike humans.”
“That is what he said, but he saw into me, I think. He read my mind. He told me…” Alecyn fought to hold on to the Nelim’s words. They felt dreamlike and were slipping away like a dream. “Something about a Tower? It is so vague already.” She shook her head in frustration. “I will try again when I have rested.”
“I would not, not tonight,” Madeleine warned. “It takes great strength to walk the Spirit Road and hold on to your body simultaneously. Attempt it tired, and you may be lost forever.”
“I wish I could remember what he said. What is the point of being able to walk the Spirit Road if you forget everything you see and hear as soon as you are back in your body?”
“I do not know of such things,” Madeleine replied.
“Or you just do not want to tell me.” Alecyn countered. Madeleine did not reply.
******************
Madeleine stared into the fire as Alecyn slept. She had pretended to sleep until she could hear her companion's deep, regular breathing. The human was learning fast, and her strength, though unskilled, frightened Madeleine. To walk the Spirit Road after so short a time was remarkable.
With time, Alecyn’s confidence grew. She became more assertive, took control, set their direction, and refused to be diverted when she wanted to know something. Madeleine stroked the box at her waist. She did not want to teach Alecyn anything she might use to free herself when the Black Hand found them. But Alecyn was strong-willed.
Madeleine wondered how long it would be before she used the box to subdue Alecyn. Before, she had to unleash the blood music like at the farmhouse. Her heart beat faster, remembering. She could not risk Alecyn discovering what lay ahead of them. Anyone who lived in these lands would know of the Tall Towers and would warn a traveler who was stumbling towards them blindly. Madeleine had quested ahead along the Spirit Road, using the excuse of hunting for food when they made camp. She knew they would be within sight of the Towers within two days. Then it would not matter if Alecyn knew the truth.